Suddenly he drew himself erect, and rising to stand in the stirrups, gazed long and intently toward a spot a quarter of a mile below, where a thin column of smoke curled over the crest of a low ridge.  Abruptly he lost interest in the brands of dead cattle and headed his horse at a run toward a coulee, that gave between two sage covered foothills only a short distance from the faint column of smoke.  “That might be Bat, an’ then again it mightn’t,” he muttered.  “It can’t be the pilgrim without Bat’s along, ‘cause he wouldn’t have no dry matches.  An’ if it’s any one else—­” he drew up sharply in the shelter of a thicket, dismounted, and made his way on foot to the summit of the ridge.  Removing his hat, he thrust his head through a narrow opening between two sage bushes, and peered into the hollow beyond.  Beside a little fire sat Bat and the pilgrim, the latter arrayed in a suit of underwear much abbreviated as to arms and legs, while from the branches of a broken tree-top drawn close beside the blaze depended a pair of mud-caked trousers and a disreputably dirty silk shirt.  The Texan picked his way down the hill, slipping and sliding in the soft mud.

“Breakfast about ready?” he asked, with a grin.

“Breakfas’! Voila!  A’m lak’ A’m got som’ breakfas’, you bet!  Me—­A’m gon’ for cut de chonk of meat out de dead steer but de pilgrim say:  ‘Non, dat bes’ we don’ eat de damn drownded cattle—­dat better we sta’ve firs’!”

Tex laughed:  “Can’t stand for the drownded ones, eh?  Well I don’t know as I blame you none, they might be some soggy.”  Reaching into his shirt-front he produced a salt bag which he tossed to Endicott.  “Here’s some sinkers I fetched along.  Divide ’em up.  I’ve et.  It ain’t no great ways back to camp——­”

“How is she—­Miss Marcum?  Did she suffer from the shock?”

“Nary suffer.  I fixed her up a camp last night back in the timber where we all landed, an’ then came away.”

“She spent the night alone in the timber!” cried Endicott.

The Texan nodded.  “Yes.  There ain’t nothin’ will bother her.  I judged it to be the best way.”  Endicott’s hand shot out and the cowboy’s met it in a firm grip.  “I reckon we’re fifty-fifty on that,” he said gravely.  “How’s the swimmin’?”

Endicott laughed:  “Fine—­only I didn’t have to do a great deal of it.  I staged a little riding contest all my own, part of the way on a dead cow, and the rest of it on this tree-trunk.  I didn’t mind that part of it—­that was fun, but it didn’t last over twenty minutes.  After the tree grounded, I had to tramp up and down through this ankle-deep mud to keep from freezing.  I didn’t dare to go any place for fear of getting lost.  I thought at first, when the water went down I would follow back up the valley, but I couldn’t find the sides and after one or two false starts I gave it up.  Then Bat showed up at daylight and we managed to build a fire.”  Endicott divided the biscuits and proceeded to devour his share.